When Angar Mora ended his life in San Rafael, it sent a ripple of sorrow through art circles in Marin.

For years, Mora was known as a source of encouragement for local artists, arranging places for them to exhibit and offering guidance on marketing their work.

He also held a weekly salon at an elegant restaurant in San Rafael, bringing artists together to discuss aesthetics and life.

Now his associates are absorbing the news that the person they knew as “Angar Mora” was actually someone else entirely, a person who had shed a prior life and essentially created a new one.

“I feel a little bit perplexed,” said Leslie Curchack, an artist specializing in nature photography. “The whole story isn’t there yet. Maybe it never will be there.”

The man known as Angar Mora was found dead Jan. 9 in the bathtub of a small house on Estancia Way in Santa Venetia. His landlord and housemate John Holder discovered the body and the suicide note, which alluded to financial difficulties.

The county coroner’s office found the cause and manner of death to be relatively straightforward: hemorrhaging from a self-inflicted wrist cut. What wasn’t straightforward was the part of the investigation that is normally routine procedure — the establishment of identity.

Although dozens of people knew the man as Angar Mora — and he was mentioned by that name many times in artists’ online posts and local events listings — the coroner’s office could not find any identification or records to confirm the identity. He did not have a driver’s license. He did not even have a bank account, always paying the rent in cash.

Chief Deputy Coroner Darrell Harris and one of his investigators, Kenneth Advincula, went back to Estancia Way to look for clues in Mora’s room. Aside from a hot plate and a few other possessions, the room contained about 20 cardboard boxes lining one wall and stacked to the ceiling.

The boxes were mostly stuffed with documents, many involving receipts for artwork. But Advincula noticed one potential clue, the kind of ceremonial sash worn by students receiving postgraduate degrees. He and Harris also found various documents — including vital records and tax documents dating to the 1990s — bearing the name Olsen.

Some of the Olsen documents included handwritten letters to Georgia. The handwriting matched Mora’s suicide note.

Soon the investigators were able to pin down a tentative identity for Mora. They obtained a DNA sample from a possible son on the East Coast and sent it to a state lab for analysis.

The lab returned the results last week, confirming Mora’s true identity: Ole Olsen, age 77.

Ole Olsen was born in Denmark on Aug. 22, 1938. For reasons unclear, he left the country as a child, although his siblings stayed behind.

In the United States, Olsen went on to a series of academic accomplishments and then a corporate career. An online profile under his name lists a master’s in business administration and a doctoral degree in philosophy from the University of Wisconsin, credentials the university confirms.

Olsen went on to work as a research analyst for Ford Motor Co. in Detroit in 1965 and 1966, according to the profile. After that, he became a program manager at Coca-Cola in Atlanta until 1968.

From 1968-72, he was an associate professor of industrial management at the Georgia Institute of Technology, said institute spokesman Jim Wallace.

Olsen’s profile shows he ran two companies beginning in the 1970s. It also lists membership in organizations such as the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

The coroner’s office determined that Olsen, who had a wife and two children in the Atlanta area, told his family that he had money problems, that he was going away and that they would never see him again.

Coroner’s investigators found documents showing a tax debt to the IRS, although it was less than $10,000. Olsen had no criminal record, Harris said.

Olsen’s son who gave the DNA sample did not respond to a request for an interview. He is a college professor.

Olsen apparently cut off his family in Denmark as well. The website Ancestry.com shows a 1996 post from family members trying to track him down.

“Left suddenly in 1992 — destination unknown — only leaving a P.O.Box (that he might not even have seen to!),” the post said. “Any traces of him would be welcome. His mother is very old and his siblings would like contact with him.”

In Marin, as Angar Mora, he apparently lived his final years as a pauper. He paid less than $700 a month for his room in Santa Venetia, where he stayed for about eight years.

“He was about a half step from being homeless,” Harris said.

Associates said Mora’s primary, if not only, source of income was from arranging exhibits for local artists. He had relationships with various restaurants in the area — including Cafe Arrivederci in downtown San Rafael and Aurora Ristorante Italiano in Bel Marin Keys — for artists to hang works on the walls.

Mora sometimes charged artists a weekly fee or took a cash commission if the work sold. The restaurants got artwork to decorate their dining rooms.

Not everyone was happy with the arrangement; some online posts accused Mora of running a racket that exploited the artists. But by all accounts the money involved was modest, and when Mora died he was $400 in arrears on his rent.

Mora also used Cafe Arrivederci as the site of his weekly salons, which ran on Monday nights. Pedro Ulloa, the restaurant’s general manager, said Mora was not forthcoming about himself, but occasionally he would let a detail slip, such as his Danish heritage.

“You could see that he had a good time talking about art,” Ulloa said. “I knew him many years. I didn’t think he was a bad person, but I knew something wasn’t 100 percent in what he said.”

Mora was vehemently opposed to having his picture taken, friends said. Curchack, the photographer, described him as being “like a tall elf” or “wizard” — about 6-foot-6, long white hair and a “large, delicate aquiline nose.”

She also said Mora had no teeth, a fact that was not immediately noticeable and did not impede his speech. Curchack speculates now that Mora probably had no money for dental care or did not want to see a dentist because it would raise questions about medical records.

Curchack said she felt admiration for Mora when he was alive and grief when he died, but in light of the Olsen revelations, she has a more “mixed” view.

Still, she said he was enormously helpful for artists, and his salons were enriching. For some sessions, he would bring a poet or opera singer to perform. At others, he would lead a discussion on a subject such as “the place of art in the consumer society,” Curchack said.

“He did something significant with these last 23 years,” said Curchack, a Petaluma resident. “I think that has to be honored.”

Holder, who rented the room to Mora, said his tenant was so reclusive he would often only emerge from his room for water. But occasionally Holder would get a glimpse of the mind at work inside.

“He was very intelligent,” Holder said. “You could tell when you talked to him. … He used uncommon words like they were common for him to use them.”

Judy Hardin Cheung, a photographer who was Mora’s friend for 15 years, said he was “very hidden” about his past, but that it was clear he was carrying pain. He had mentioned being devastated over the breakup of a marriage.

“For a long time I strongly suspected he did not arrive on Earth with the same name he was using,” said Cheung, a Santa Rosa resident. “He was contrary enough that if he wanted to drop off the face of the Earth, he would do that. And you do that by changing your name.”

Olsen’s family is still deciding funeral arrangements, the coroner’s office said. Mora’s friends in Marin are planning a memorial for him in May.